A Proposed Site for a New Memorial at Downing Park's High Point
In light of 开云体育官网鈥檚 advocacy for Downing Park in Newburgh, N.Y., and the proposed reinterment at the historic designed landscape of remains from a former African American burial site, I thought I would weigh in with some thoughts of my own on the subject. I need not go over the history of that historic landscape, other than to say that it was the product of a late collaboration of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., and Calvert Vaux and their respective sons, John Charles Olmsted and Downing Vaux. Downing Park is one of the great American landscapes that the two senior men undertook to design free of charge in memory of Andrew Jackson Downing, the influential author, designer, and horticulturist and Vaux鈥檚 former partner and friend. Newspapers at the time of the park鈥檚 creation in the 1880s also reported that the park was to be a memorial to Charles Downing, Andrew鈥檚 brother, who had died recently after a long and distinguished career as an internationally known scientific horticulturist. Charles Darwin, for one, acknowledged him in his famous book The Origin of Species.
While I might question the appropriateness of the decision by the city to reinter graves from the former Newburgh Colored Burial Ground within the grounds of the park, the City Council has approved it. My concern is the location chosen for this reinterment. It seems to me that the area designated misses the opportunity to reestablish a significant element of the original design, namely the site of the demolished Observatory (designed by Downing Vaux) that once stood on the highest poin